Marketing to the Military: Starting with Appreciation

Marketing to the Military: Starting with Appreciation

May 9, 2019

May is Military Appreciation Month! This is a time in the US that we celebrate the Military, their sacrifice, and their families. Our team at Refuel has been conducting extensive research studies annually on this special niche population and interacted with over 300 brands on strategic and effective marketing to the military, their families, and veterans.

So what have we learned?

Military service members by majority are young and family centric. This digitally native generation connects with people and brands vastly different than past generations. In turn they must be communicated with through multiple media channels, both digital and traditional.

45% of active duty are Gen Z

53% are married and 38% have children

41% of post 9/11 veterans are millennial

Military service members and their families are nomadic by nature, since they move every 17 months on average. Because of this, military service members must be adaptable and therefore transitory with their purchasing decisions. Because of this dynamic, military peer and leadership has a major influence on purchasing decisions during these times.

Though they are always on the move, military service members and their families are very brand loyal. Many times (68% of the time) military service members and their families said they have strong brand affinity to brands they’ve seen on base. So what else keeps them so loyal?

60% of spouses say quality

40% of active duty members say special military offers

41% of veterans say it’s because a product is made in America

At Refuel the military audience is very special to us and we’ve invested our time and resources to learning more about this population’s lifestyle, media consumption, and shopping habits and preferences. If there’s one key thing we’ve learned that is true year in and year out of these research studies, it is that they engage with brands and media differently in comparison to their general market counterparts.

To see more insights on military media consumption, contact us for our latest full research study.